"You must know, mates," he began, taking out his quid and stowing it away in his waistcoat-pocket, "I belonged to a whaler which was lost out here, when those of her crew who escaped were picked up by an Indiaman and carried to Madras. I with others was there pressed on board the _Caroline_ frigate. I didn't much like it at first; but when I had shaken myself, and looked about me, and heard that the captain was a fine sort of a fellow, I thought it was just as well to do my duty like a man, and to make myself happy. Captain Cole, that was his name, wasn't a chap to let the grass grow under the ship's bottom. Directly after I joined, we were ordered off to Amboyna, in company with the _Piemontaise_, Captain Foote; the 18-gun brig _Barracouta_; and transport _Mandarin_, with a hundred European soldiers. We heard that when the captain went to take his leave of the admiral--Drury was his name--he asked leave just to knock up some of the Dutch settlements on the way. "`Well,' says the admiral, `there's no harm just frightening them a little, and you may be able to surprise a port or two; but don't go and get into mischief, now, and hurt yourselves. There are several impregnable places, such as Banda, for instance, which it would be out of the question for you to attack. Vast heaps of wealth are stored up there, so the Dutch will take precious good care that you don't get into the place.' "`We'll see about that,' thought the captain to himself, winking with the eye which was turned away from the admiral. `Of course, sir, we'll do nothing rash,' says he. `It isn't the way of English sailors. We are always steady, sure sort of fellows.' "`That's right,' says the admiral; and away went the captain, having made up his mind to a thing or two. "We reached Palo-Penang on the 30th May, in the year 1810. There the captain persuaded the governor to let him have about twenty artillery-men and a lot of scaling-ladders; and having learned something more about the chief place in Banda, called Banda-Neira, he kept to the resolution he had all along in his mind, to try and get possession of it. In spite of the south-east monsoon, away we sailed, therefore, for the Java Sea. As it would not have done to let the Dutchmen in other places guess what we were about to do, he determined to take the ship through the passage between the big island of Borneo and Malwalli. It was a touch-and-go matter to get through, for in every direction there were coral-reefs, which would pretty soon have brought us up if we had run on them; but we had look-outs at the jib-boom-end and the topsail-yard-arms, and as the water was clear, and the weather fine, we escaped all danger.